Opera soars with love story amid Spanish civil war

The fiery politics of 1868 Spain on the eve of a rebellion are nothing compared to the politics of the heart raging in the Florida Grand Opera's season opener, the zarzuela "Luisa Fernanda."

Impassioned lovers in a triangle (actually a quadrangle) blithely choose sides not based on convictions, but on how those choices might benefit their romantic pursuits.

This operetta is what would result if Franz Lehar wrote in Castilian and created a telenovela of "Gone With the Wind": Luisa is in love with Javier. Vidal is in love with Luisa. Carolina steals Javier. Luisa agrees to marry Vidal, but still loves Javier -- all while civil war erupts off stage.

Zarzuelas were wildly popular entertainments in the early 20th century in Spanish-speaking countries, including Cuba. But this is the first time Florida Grand Opera has chosen this unique brand of operetta.

FGO acquits itself well with a thoroughly entertaining, if only occasionally moving rendition of this 1932 piece scored by Federico Moreno Torroba and scripted by Federico Romero and Guillermo Fernández Shaw.

This visually stylish, if exceedingly spare black-and-white production benefits from a strong cast that invests more naturalistic acting skills into what is, of course, as unrealistic an art form as exists on stage. Audiences accustomed to far less credible situations in classical opera will not question the emotional gamesmanship crucial to a Byzantine plot more complex than a week's recaps of "Days of Our Lives."

The novice's ability to follow the plot may be due to the abridged nature of this edition, which began at the Teatro Real in Madrid and has been reproduced around the world. About 20 percent of the dialogue was excised, partly to make the remaining music more prominent for pure opera lovers, and because the language was too idiosyncratic and idiomatic Spanish to translate into other languages.

What is left is the soaring and swelling music, ranging from classical aria structures to Spanish-infused folk melodies to a Viennese waltz. The dialogue retains a wry sense of humor and unabashed sexual entendres, both ribald allusions of seamstresses to the owner of the pants they sew as well as a seducer referring to a garden when he means a conquest's body.

All the principal singers are zarzuela veterans from Spain, notably the virile baritone Angel Odena as the older faithful suitor Vidal. His arias were so stirring that he pulled focus from the other leads: tenor Antonio Gandia as the opportunistic roué Javier, soprano Davinia Rodriquez as the predatory Countess Carolina, and even soprano Amparo Navarro in the title role.

But credit Navarro with the evening's sole affecting moment, the duet "Cállate, corazón!" when she tells Javier that she still loves him but is honor-bound to marry Vidal.

Overseeing the effort was "associate production director" Javier Ulacia who was an aide to the original production's director, Emilio Sagi. The only obvious flaw was that the fine orchestra led by Pablo Mielgo occasionally drowned out the singers.

The end result was a diverting evening that hopefully marks only the first of FGO's experiments with the zarzuela form.